the Canadian a
Socialist, or an Individualist? Does he believe that each man should
stand upon his own feet or lean upon a state crutch? There is no state
church in Canada. Then, what part does religion play? Is it a shadow,
or a substance? Is it a refuge for the unfit and the weak to shift the
responsibility for their own failure to the fatalism of the will of
God; or is religion a terrible and dynamic force that compels right for
right's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live in
his home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, dreamy and flabby in will
power; or is he whisky-drinking, fiery, practical and pugnacious? Why
hasn't he a distinctive literature, a distinctive art? Nature never
was more lavish to any people in beautiful landscape from the quiet
rural scenery of the maritime provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to the
far-flung epic of the fenceless prairies and the Homeric grandeur of
the mountains. Why are quiet rural beauty and illimitable freedom and
lofty splendor not reflected in poem and novel and ballad and picture?
The Canadian may answer--We go in more for athletics than aesthetics:
we are living literature, not writing it. In our snow-covered prairies
edged by the violet mist, lined in silver and pricked at night by the
diamond light of a million stars, we are living art, not painting it.
That our mountains are dumb and inarticulate, that our forests chant
the litany of the pines untranslated to the winds of heaven, and that
our cataracts thunder their diapasons inimitable to art--is no proof
that though we are dumb and inarticulate, we are not lifted and
transported and inspired by the wondrous beauties of the heritage God
has given us. The Canadian may say this theoretically, but is he
strengthened in body and made greater in soul by the mystic splendors
of his country? In a word, has the Canadian found himself? He is not
self-conscious, if that be what is meant by finding self; and that may
be a good thing; for self-consciousness is of one of two things--the
vanity of femininity in its adolescence, or the picayune pecking
introspection of natures thrown in on self instead of exuberantly
spending energy in effort outside of self. Self-consciousness is too
much ego, whether it be old or young; and the devil must be cast out
into the swine over the cliff into the sea, before there can enter into
men, or nations, that Spirit of God which makes for great service in
Destiny.

H